Insects. 9831 



Some clays after these little creatures were first seen the females were 

 observed to be laying their eggs. They make a longilitudinal opening 

 with the saw in a young leaf close to the margin, and then deposit the 

 egg between the two surfaces of the leaf; the wound thus made is 

 almost invisible, the egg quite so, the only indication of the place 

 being a slight swelling. I was not able to extract an egg from the 

 leaf, but from the abdomen of a female, which I cut open, I obtained 

 an egg-mass containing nine elliptical eggs, opaque-white, and without 



markings. 



In a short time the leaves are seen to curl up underneath from the 

 margin inwards, so that at last the whole leaf looks like a midrib with 

 a curl at each side ; fig. 7 represents a twig with leaves in this slate, 

 seen from below, at a is a female half concealed by the border of the 

 leaf. It seems to me to be probable that after depositing the egg the 

 female proceeds to make little incisions in the under side of the leaf, 

 beginning at the margin, by which means the growth in the epidermis 

 of that part of the leaf is retarded ; but as the growth of the uninjured 

 upper surface continues in the regular way, the margin extending itself 

 only on that surface must necessarily be bent round underneath, and 

 thus the leaf becomes rolled up. 



I have met with females of this species on the under sides of leaves 

 until late in the month of May. 



On the last of that month I carefully examined one of the curled-up 

 leaves, and found therein a very small caterpillar, not more than three 

 millimetres long (fig. 1). This little creature was yellowish white, nearly- 

 transparent, with a trace of green. The globular head was somewhat 

 grayish, the eyes being black, the trophi ferruginous ; with a strong glass 

 some hairs could be seen on the body. I over and over again counted 

 twenty-two legs ; this appeared to me remarkable, as Selandria aethiops, 

 belonging to the same division of the genus, has only twenty legs in 

 the larva. The terminal legs were not applied to the surface, as 

 shewn in fig. 1. 



On the 8th of June 1 again examined some leaves, and found larvae of 

 more than twice the above-mentioned size, namely, 8 millimetres (may 

 we from this draw the conclusion that these larvae grow remarkably 

 fast?). The latter larvae were rather more strongly coloured, the 

 anterior part of the body being brownish yellow, the posterior greenish 

 (fig. 2). On examination with a lens, it was seen that each segment 

 of the body was divided into five folds, of which the first two bore six 

 little knobs, on each of which were two little stiff hairs, the last two 

 folds were smooth (fig. 5). The head was now distinctly greenish 



